View full sizeJOHN C. WHITEHEAD, The Patriot-News Bethany Morrissey of Waynesboro looks at dishes at "The Titanic Exhibition" inside The Whitaker Center for Science and Arts on Saturday. Nearly 100 years since the R.M.S. Titanic sank into its icy grave, the story of one of the world’s most famous oceanic disasters holds a spell over our imagination.

No matter that its tragic maiden voyage is the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters or that modern era has narrated voyage disasters of its own — Pan Am, TWA, 9/11 — the fate of this celebrated ocean liner and the 1,517 lives that perished April 15, 1912, after it hit an iceberg and sank, can still move people to tears.

Thomas, like most visitors at the exhibition, moved slowly among the Plexiglas cases that showcase a trove of artifacts from the sunken luxury liner. Nearly a dozen artifacts are making their first public appearance since being salvaged from the bottom of the North Atlantic.

“I’m just amazed with the beauty and the structure and how it was built and the stories,” said Thomas of Marysville, a fan of the 1997 James Cameron movie.

Along with the artifacts, the timeline of the exhibition progresses with historical documentation, photographs, replicas of rooms on the ship and accounts of some of the lives onboard. An accompanying soundtrack — nautical clanking, fog horns, melodic piano tunes popular at the time — change along the exhibition and, lend a foreboding and mournful feel to the tour.

“It takes you back in time, the research, the detail that is still available,” said LaAnna Walter, of York.

She had stopped in front of a case housing a first-class porcelain cup that was covered in tube worms, which had adhered themselves to the cup over the decades.

“It just caught my attention,” said Walter, who has family ties to the Battle of Gettysburg. She said students of the Titanic are often captivated by its story because they have traced a family lineage connection with someone onboard the ship.

“Just to be able to take you back in time and see how the past is relevant to the present...to find a human connection and not just that it’s a pretty dish,” Walter said.

Au gratin dishes are on display at "The Titanic Exhibition" inside The Whitaker Center for Science and Arts.

The Whitaker Center first featured the exhibition five years ago, attracting 52,000 visitors to what remains its most successful audience draw in the arts and science center’s history. This current run features 150 artifacts, including the 11 making their first public appearance. They include postcards, an itinerary and a $1 silver certificate, all of which survived the depths of the sea largely because they had been packed in leather bags. The tanning process used on the leather helped to preserve the objects from the acidic waters of the ocean.

Billed as an unsinkable luxury liner in its time, the Titanic left Southhampton, England, on April 10 with 2,223 people aboard. Four days later, the ship struck an iceberg, which cut through the double hull below the ocean surface. Five, possibly six, of the ship’s watertight compartments flooded. A few hours later, the ship broke in half and sank. Only 706 people survived.

Even now, the account provides a wealth of lessons in technology, science, history and social sciences.

Mandy Wells, originally from Enola and now a science teacher in Ocean City, Md., said she was amazed that the objects salvaged from the wreckage had sustained the massive amounts of deep-sea pressure.

Her sister, Andrea Hettinger, said she was captivated by the social class systems in the Titanic story, in which wealthy first-class passengers were pampered and largely isolated from the second- and third-class passengers.

“Things were so different then,” said Hettinger of York Haven. “The social lines were so strict. We’ve come a long way as a society.”

Wells and Hettinger cried at the end of the tour when they learned the fate of the passenger on their boarding pass, an element of the exhibit. At the start of the exhibit, each visitor receives a boarding pass of an actual Titanic passenger. Only at the end of the exhibit do they learn whether they survived or perished.

“This I think is the best part of it,” said Hettinger, whose passenger, Mrs. Benjamin Peacock (Edith Nile) parished along with her two young daughters. “It makes you feel like you are a part of it.”

Scientists estimate that the Titanic has 40 to 90 years left before iron-eating microbes consume its hulking remains and it implodes and collapses. Then, the only thing left of it will be the artifacts — and the enduring legend.

“Nothing is indestructible,” said Liverpool resident Audrey Ahl, nearing the end of her emotional tour through the exhibit. “It doesn’t matter how powerful you are as a person or whether you make a million dollars. I don’t think you can put a price on someone’s life. I think all should have had a chance. Not just women, children and the wealthy. I’m glad laws are different now.”

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